Dead man's family angry with police

Wednesday

May 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2012 at 2:48 PM

As the last minutes of his life wound down, John Frizzell sat shirtless and shoeless in the back of a Columbus police cruiser. His good intentions landed him there, his loved ones say. As Frizzell waited for someone to hear his side of the night's events on April?24, officers were in his Hilltop home speaking to the younger couple who had been living with him for several weeks. When police came outside 20 to 30 minutes later, they found the 67-year-old Frizzell slumped over and unresponsive in the cruiser.

Theodore Decker, The Columbus Dispatch

As the last minutes of his life wound down, John Frizzell sat shirtless and shoeless in the back of a Columbus police cruiser.

His good intentions landed him there, his loved ones say.

As Frizzell waited for someone to hear his side of the night's events on April 24, officers were in his Hilltop home speaking to the younger couple who had been living with him for several weeks.

When police came outside 20 to 30 minutes later, they found the 67-year-old Frizzell slumped over and unresponsive in the cruiser.

Shortly after their arrival at Frizzell's home at 11:15 p.m., police had waved an ambulance squad off. Now, they called a squad back, but it wouldn't do any good.

A month later, his family and some neighbors remain angry with police, who they say are at least partly culpable for his death.

They say police sided with two conniving drug addicts, one of whom was wanted on two warrants that night, instead of a law-abiding homeowner whose sole brush with the criminal-justice system in Franklin County appears to be a stop-sign violation in 1994.

And when relatives began demanding answers from police that night, they and neighbors say that they were met with callous disregard.

"I don't give a (expletive) who died," family and neighbors say one officer commented.

A letter from Gregory N. Finnerty, a lawyer and family friend, has kicked off an internal-affairs investigation in the Police Division.

"For a family in grieving, stunned by the sudden loss of a beloved family member, the conduct of your forces could not have been more cruel, insensitive, horrendous and unprofessional," Finnerty wrote in a letter to Chief Kimberley Jacobs that was copied to Franklin County Coroner Jan Gorniak.

Gorniak said a ruling on Frizzell's death is pending. The autopsy found evidence of heart disease and only minor scrapes and bruises, she said. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system.

Police promise a full review of the events.

"Not until the investigation is complete will we know exactly what happened," said Sgt. Rich Weiner, a Police Division spokesman. "We can't rush to judgment. We understand that the family has questions, and we're hoping to resolve them with the internal investigation."

In all his years on N. Eureka Avenue, John Frizzell was a well-liked neighbor who loved motorcycles and kept his house and property tidy.

"Other people around there call him 'the lawn-mower man' 'cause he'd fix their mowers and wouldn't even charge them," said Tim Frizzell, one of John's five children.

"Cut his grass about three times a week," said neighbor Mark Blankenship. Even with the generation gap, Frizzell would invite Blankenship, 23, to relax with a Pepsi.

"He was so kind," neighbor Krystal Meier said.

Family members had warned Frizzell not to take in the young couple and the woman's 11-year-old daughter. But they needed a place to stay temporarily, and Frizzell had known the woman since she was a child, family said.

After several weeks, though, Frizzell confided in a close friend that he had made a dire mistake. The couple was using drugs, sponging off him financially and stealing his medications.

On April 24, he'd had it. Neighbors heard the hollering. Frizzell was ordering the couple out.

The woman called 911, saying Frizzell had threatened them and that her husband might be having a heart attack.

"This is his residence, but he attacked my husband first," she said in the recorded call.

Savannah Clinedinst saw the police arrive across the street. They went into the house and almost immediately brought out Frizzell in only a pair of jeans.

She said she could see Frizzell's mouth moving as if to say something, but she and others knew something the officers didn't: He had a bad stutter all his life that grew worse when he was upset or stressed.

"He was trying to say something, but that police officer wouldn't give him a chance," Meier said.

The Fire Division squad pulled up. Clinedinst, Blankenship and Meier all say they watched the police wave off the squad. The driver asked whether police were sure, then left, they said.

"Had they let that ambulance see him, would he still be with us?" asked Finnerty, the lawyer. "Why did they wave off that ambulance? They are going to have to answer to that."

Weiner pointed out that the information police had from the 911 call suggested it was the woman's husband, not Frizzell, who might need medical attention.

After their father's death, his children demanded answers, but "the cops wouldn't tell us anything," said his son Tim Frizzell. Making it worse: The couple were permitted to remain in Frizzell's house that night even as Frizzell's children were kept out.

Police "just had no emotion, no compassion that night," Meier said.

"They treated John as a druggie, is what they did," Blankenship said.

Police stood by as the couple left the next morning, even though court records show that the man had an active warrant on charges of domestic violence and assault and a second bench warrant for failing to appear in court on driving-under-suspension charges.

"They were believing these lies from these drug addicts," Tim Frizzell said. He said the couple "literally ransacked the house and took anything they could sell."

One of his first moves was to change the locks.

"Every time I drive past my dad's house, I still expect to see him sitting on the porch waving, and he's not there," he said. "We basically lost a lot of faith in the police department with this whole deal."

tdecker@dispatch.com

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